Posti announces “significant” reduction in planned lay-offs
Finland’s Posti has announced that it has concluded the cooperative negotiations over its re-structuring plans for most of the country – and it has managed to reduce the number of job cuts “significantly”. In a statement posted on Friday (18 March), Posti said: “The cooperation negotiations concerning basic delivery in Operations, the entire Sales and Customer Service, and the Group and Operations administration have been concluded, with the exception of south-eastern Finland.”
Originally, Posti envisaged that it would have to lose 860 employees. However, following the negotiations Posti will reduce the number of jobs by 682, with a maximum of 181 layoffs, and 198 employees will be moved to part-time jobs.
Jaana Jokinen, Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Posti. commented: “We are pleased that we can implement the required changes with fewer personnel reductions than expected. We managed to reduce the number of layoffs through the Uusi polku (New Path) support program and different voluntary and retirement arrangements.”
Posti added: “The Operations unit’s negotiations concerning basic delivery were concluded on 16 March, with the exception of south-eastern Finland.
“Our units in south-eastern Finland are in the process of testing new delivery technology and intend to introduce a model that involves centralizing different Posti services in distribution terminals.
“In the cooperation negotiations in south-eastern Finland, the need for personnel reductions is a maximum of 95 permanent employees. Over half of the reductions can be handled through voluntary solutions. The target group comprises 390 people.”
Yrjö Eskola, Vice President, Operations, commented: “The testing period needs to be sufficiently long in order to offer a proper overall understanding of the effects of using the delivery technology. This is why the cooperation negotiations in south-eastern Finland are to be concluded later. The negotiations are estimated to be concluded in April.”
